The Chinook Indian Nation’s 120-year fight for sovereignty Federal recognition provides tribes with critical health care and education. But there are nations the U.S. refuses to recognize. by High Country News / April 7, 2021 Before the pandemic, the cedar plankhouse called Cathlapotle would have been full of stories and fire. Every winter, the Chinook Indian Nation and neighboring tribes hold their annual gathering here, on their ancestral lands on a Columbia River floodplain, where red-winged blackbirds sing from the cattails and yellow-and-orange-eyed ...